Book Review

We Can’t Teach What We Don’t KnowWhite Teachers,

Multiracial SchoolsSecond Edition

Gary R. Howard

Gary R. Howard

Chapter 1White Man Dancing:

A Story of Personal Transformation

About the Author, Gary R. Howard

• Born in a small rural town near Seattle, Washington

• First contact with a person of color at the age of 18, senior year of high school.

• Went on a double date with a classmate, his African- American girlfriend and her friend

• Attended Yale Universityafter graduating high school

• While attending Yale, worked with inter city Black and Hispanic Children at the local YMCA

Baptism By Fire

• Howard attended Yale during the 1960’s • He and his wife moved to an area of New Haven

named “The Hill”• A very impoverished neighborhood that during the

60’s was a location of massive racial riots and burnings

• It was here that Gary Howard found his calling to fight racism and promote cultural awareness

Chapter 2 White Dominance and the Weight of the

West• “The Enemy is dominance itself, not White

people.”• Teachers have a responsibility to our students to

assure that we and other educators remain open to ever deeper levels of awareness of dominance.

• “If our examination and understanding of the root causes of social inequality are too shallow, then our approach to corrective action will necessarily be superficial and ineffective” (page 30)

Why does Social Dominance Exist?

1. Minimal Group Paradigm

2. Social Positionality

3. Social Dominance Theory

4. Privilege and Penalty

Minimal Group Paradigm• Suggests that human beings tend to demonstrate

discriminatory in-group and out-group dynamics even when there is extremely limited basis for drawing distinctions between members of the groups.

• Two Lessons 1.People tend to draw distinctions between themselves as

individuals and groups, even if the distinctions are essentially meaningless in a larger context

2. Having drawn these distinctions we then ascribe values of superiority and inferiority to the various in-groups and out-groups we have created

Social Positionality

• Subjective- how I see myself and how others see me.

• Objective- relates to my social position in terms of more quantitative and observable measures, such as income, education level, or job title.

• From a non-white point-of-view, both subjectively and objectively Whites have been collectively allocated disproportionate amounts of power, authority, wealth, control, and dominance.

• An individual white person may not feel dominant or see themselves belonging to a collective group defined by Whiteness.

Social Dominance TheoryFour Basic Assumptions1. Human social systems are predisposed to form social hierarchies, with

hegemonic groups at the top and negative reference at the bottom.

2. Hegemonic groups tend to be disproportionately male

3. Most forms of social oppression, such as racism, sexism, and classism, can be viewed as manifestations of group-based social hierarchy.

4. Social hierarchy is a survival strategy that has been selected by many species of primates, including Homo sapiens.

White educators ought to understand how our inherited hegemonic position continues to influence the educational process today, because we should be committed to equitable opportunities and outcomes for all of our students.

Page 35

Privilege and Penalty

• Social dominance will cause privileges to flow to certain groups if they are earned or not.

• Penalties, punishments, and inequities flow to other groups through no fault of their own other than their group membership.

Example TV program

Methodologies of Dominance

• Disease

• Warfare

• Land Theft

• Religion

• Missionaries and Bureaucrats

• Education

• Alienation and Alcohol

Chapter 3Decoding the Dominance Paradigm

Three major processes that function together as the dynamics of dominance

1.The Assumption of Rightness

2.The Luxury of Ignorance

3.The Legacy of Privilege

The Assumption of Rightness

• Hegemonic groups do not consider their beliefs, attitudes, and actions to be determined by cultural conditioning or the influences of group membership

• Many Whites don't even think of themselves as having culture; we’re simply “right”. Dominate groups don’t hold “perspectives,” they hold “Truth”

The Luxury of Ignorance• Assumption of rightness is

reinforced by the fact that dominant groups tend to know very little about the “other” groups

• Dominant groups can function without knowledge or interaction with those people that are not part of the dominant group.

• This leads to the projecting false perceptions and assumptions as truths.

Example- Jesus and English

The Legacy of Privilege

• “The Real Americans”

• “forever foreign” syndrome

• Cheap food

• The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

• “Voice” Dominant groups have the power to control public information and education

Chapter 4White Educators and the River of

ChangeWhite Teachers and the

Healing Response

1.Honesty

2.Empathy

3.Advocacy

4.Action

Chapter 5Mapping the Journey of White Identity

Development Stages of White Identity Development

1.Contact

2.Disintegration

3.Reintegration

4.Pseudo-independence

5.Immersion / emersion

6.Autonomy

Chapter 6Ways of Being White: A Practitioner’s

Approach to Multicultural Growth

White Identity Orientations

1.Fundamentalist White Identity

2.Integrationist White Identity

3.Transformationist White Identity

Chapter 7White Teachers and School Reform:

Toward a Transformationist Pedagogy

• What Transformationist Teachers Know

1.Race Matters

2.Change Begins With Us

3.Beliefs Determine Outcomes

4.Teaching Is a Calling, Not Just a Job